PRONI says that the street directories featured on its website consist of original volumes from 1819 to 1900, although it doesn’t have copies of all street directories published before 1852, and there are gaps in its series of the Belfast and Ulster Street Directory.

PRONI says that these volumes, which were previously on open access in its search room, were heavily used, and that the paper in some of the volumes was very fragile. The directories were therefore at risk, as pages or parts of pages had already been lost or damaged, and further handling would have endangered their long term preservation.

PRONI therefore decided to scan the directories and provide a search facility that would enable users to find key words in a section of a directory, in a particular directory or in any directories.

Yorkshire certainly does have parish records. Perhaps what the people you spoke to meant was that there isn’t an Online Parish Clerk website for Yorkshire. This page on the GENUKI website will tell you about Yorkshire parish records http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/#ChurchRecords.